IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe vs NetApp AFF comparison

IBM and NetApp are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. IBM is ranked #20 with an average rating of 8.6, while NetApp is ranked #2 with an average rating of 9.1. IBM holds a 0.5% mindshare in AFS, compared to NetApp’s 9.4% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 98% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

NetApp AFF and IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe compete in the storage solutions category. While NetApp AFF is favored for its pricing and support, IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe stands out due to its advanced features.

Features: NetApp AFF delivers high performance and efficient data management. It includes integrated data protection and storage efficiency. IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe provides superior NVMe performance, robust AI integration, and advanced data reduction. The key difference lies in NetApp AFF's strong data protection versus IBM's cutting-edge technology and performance.

Room for Improvement: NetApp AFF needs better scalability options and more intuitive management tools. Users also seek enhancements in expandability. IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe requires improved integration with other systems and more comprehensive support documentation. It could benefit from more seamless integrations and detailed support resources.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: NetApp AFF is known for its straightforward deployment process and responsive customer service. IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe, while slightly more complex to deploy, is backed by strong support services. Both are supported well, but NetApp AFF is noted for its easier setup process.

Pricing and ROI: NetApp AFF offers competitive pricing and quick return on investment with immediate cost benefits. IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe, though higher in initial setup cost, provides a remarkable ROI through long-term performance gains. NetApp AFF gives immediate cost advantages, while IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe justifies its higher price with superior long-term benefits.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe vs. NetApp AFF Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe vs. NetApp AFF

July 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.9%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is 0.5%, down from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp AFF is 9.4%, down from 9.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

All-Flash Storage

Featured Reviews

Jaehoon Oh

Chief Technology Officer at Lambda256

Supports efficient storage management through volume snapshots and offers reliable non-disruptive upgrades

I have no specific improvements to suggest for Pure FlashArray X NVMe at this time. The performance statistics could be enhanced. I can see the performance statistics in the Pure Storage console, but it does not show the performance by 4K byte unit. It displays IOPS and bandwidth, but IOPS is about real use, and I want to know how many IOPS are currently running in 4K byte units. I cannot see that IOPS because most storage systems report their performance by 4K byte unit. I want to see Pure Storage performance by 4K byte unit to compare with other storage or other internal NVMe SSD.

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MohammedIsmail

Datacenter Manager at Tracker Connect

Enhanced storage performance and an easy setup with compression challenges

We use IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe as a storage device in the IT industry The features I find most valuable include its use for storage and performance. The solution's compression needs to be improved, as it's not the best. Furthermore, support from the partner could also be improved as it's been…

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Ian Rousom

Owner at RTX

Flexible with great support and high-speed multi-protocol storage

Keystone offers flexible consumption models that go beyond just how much capacity at such and such a speed, et cetera. We don't always know what the profile of that data will be. However, if we can quickly agree on terms that meet our needs and make NetApp still reasonably profitable, we can confidently deploy, see how things go and adjust. That kind of service delivery model, that customer service model has sped things up and made contract negotiations much easier. It frankly made the owners of the system more confident. We've experienced faster time to market. It's hard for us to find and retain infrastructure staff. We're in a business where the firm fixed price contract reigns supreme, and so we can't always just offer someone more money. However, if they can dedicate their time to learning one company's portfolio and learning it really well, but be useful in a bunch of different places, they will do well. We've seen that in a lot of different places. We've been able to hire younger people and retain them, moving them from program to program based on their understanding of the solution its skill set, and its portability. It's been useful for high-speed multi-protocol storage in places with ever-increasing density. We have limits on how much power and cooling and rack space we have, and yet they've delivered every time. We needed a storage company that had mastery of multi-protocol, and this solution stands out. They especially stand out as a secure provider. We require solutions that we can run ourselves, that we can air gap since so much of what we do is either classified or very sensitive or cannot live in a public ecosystem. For us, the issue consuming AI has been the trust of the models given to us by third parties. We can't necessarily trust their provenance, what fed them, what originally trained them, or what gave them their worldview, for lack of a better term. We can't simply just trust that at face value since we know nothing about where it came from or what inferences it might make. We must assume that some AI inferences were made deliberately to damage or hurt national security systems. So the models that we start with tend to be very, very primitive, crude, and not well trained, so we have to train them much longer and not always with the availability of cloud that has inexhaustible capacity. A partner who understands this and provides consistency at all scales is very important.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The duplication algorithm allows us to get a lot more use out of less storage. We're running a five terabyte array right now and we're running probably about 30 terabytes on it. So the duplication rate is pretty phenomenal, without a cost to performance. It still runs pretty smoothly."

"The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."

"The latency is good."

"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."

"The database workloads are pretty fast because I frequently move data from here to there."

"It is very easy to install and configure. It has got excellent diagnostics. If you really need to see how the box is performing, the console gives you a lot of information. You can set thresholds as well as alerts based on the thresholds, which is a very powerful functionality. They are very proactive. They know how to monitor and manage the systems. They see a problem, and they are all over it before us. They see the problem before we see it, which is very good."

"The Pure1 component is most valuable at this point in time when comparing it with EMC. Pure1 is where you can have your diagnostics in the cloud, so you can look at things from your mobile phone."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"Good performance with a user-friendly UI."

"It is a very stable product. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten because we did not face any issues in the last three years."

"What I like about the product are its high availability, maximum efficiency in performance, and its ability to handle a high level of I/O operations."

"The most valuable feature of IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is the snapshot. We use it daily for all of the storage units."

"A key feature is that compared to storage systems that we've been familiar with over decades, IBM simply does not fail. The reason is that IBM is the only manufacturer that engineers its own flash module, and there is a key architectural difference from everything else that we have seen in the market. The difference is that the flash module has the computational capability, which allows reliability and capacity enhancements to be uploaded from the main controllers and run in each module. So, each of the flash drives becomes its own little storage system, and that is extremely effective architecture. In this field, with this type of system, IBM has made a statement. They've never had one of these modules cause an outage. So, the failure rates on these things are just in a whole different universe from what we were accustomed to."

"The features I find most valuable include its use for storage and performance."

"It is a very stable solution."

"The most valuable features of IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe are its steady performance and usefulness in high-traffic environments."

More IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe pros

"NetApp offers the best value in terms of storage and compatibility. The solution is compatible with every product we use, including Dell and Cisco. NetApp is at the forefront of innovation. They've been doing this for a long time, and they provide excellent support to their partners."

"We recently started using the volume encryption feature, which is helpful because there are some federal projects that require data at rest to be encrypted."

"MetroCluster provides business continuity and is a critical part of our contingency setup."

"Using System Manager for green management or command line interface, we have a single point for managing the cluster. It is much easier to manage. It is very seamless. The product is robust and solid."

"I like the ability to snapshot, and the cloning features are valuable to us as well. I like that I can quickly and efficiently snapshot the data and move it to wherever I need to locally or in the cloud. Also, I know that when I take the snapshot that all of the data will be there and that it will be usable when I need to use it."

"The speed is important; no more problems caused by high latency."

"I would rate NetApp AFF a ten out of ten."

"We have had issues before on our infrastructure where 20 to 30 percent of the people would come to us pointing the finger at the storage technology or storage back-end. That is now virtually zero."

More NetApp AFF pros

Cons

"There are some challenges with data encryption and reduction."

"Right now, the box itself is just strictly working as a backend storage system. It would be fantastic if we could access it directly like a NAS device through network access or SIS drives. I think they have an interface, but I am not sure how good it is. If we could address a box directly on the network without having to go through a server, it would be great. The replication schemas could be improved. We are not using replication on the storage level right now. We use a different type of replication. If their replication would be as good as the one that we have, I would probably run the replication schema because it might be faster, but I don't know that for a fact. So, I cannot say that they have good replication. All I can say is that they need to inform us better."

"We have run into a couple of instances recently where we are running out of space. So we have had to buy some more packs for it and they have deployed fine and it has increased smoothly."

"Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe."

"The tool's pricing is higher than competitors."

"It feels more suitable for small and medium-sized businesses rather than enterprises."

"We need better data deduplication."

"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"The solution's compression feature could be better."

"Deduplication and compression should be improved."

"I would like to see IBM products become more affordable because they can be quite expensive, which limits their accessibility to a broader customer base."

"IBM is currently not offering volume-based encryption or compression, while other brands or IBM's competitors are doing it."

"The support could be better."

"IBM's support is not good. I experienced a big problem where I opened the console IBM Storage and would see that something was broken. I called the call centers, and I said, "I have a problem. My drive is not working." They want me to give them the serial number, I gave it to them and they told me "I cannot find your product. Your product is not here.""

"In the FlashSystem 5200, there were only four ports of 32 fiber channels for the architecture. This has been resolved in the new generation."

"The efficacy of the GUI in IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe could be enhanced, and it would be beneficial to include a feature that can prevent ransomware attacks."

More IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe cons

"The total cost of ownership has increased a little."

"The only downside to NetApp AFF is its price."

"The product should be more competitive and come up with additional features. They should keep the client always in mind and as the top priority. This would be the best way to compete with other solutions."

"NetApp AFF is a highly expensive solution, and its pricing should be reduced."

"There is room for improvement in terms of support. I have noticed that if I sometimes call their customer care for a particular issue, they will give me another number and ask me to call that other team. It would be better if they could do a warm transfer. That would save customers time from calling all the numbers again and speaking to another team."

"We don't have any challenges with NetApp. We only need to update it on emerging software and versions that are put out or any enhancements that they've included or things that they've deprecated. NetApp's product is superior, so our engineers must stay on top of all the features and things that they've taken away."

"Something I've talked to NetApp about in the past is going more to a node-based architecture, like the hyper-converged solutions that we are doing nowadays. Because the days of having to buy massive quantities of storage all at one time, have changed to being able to grow in smaller increments from a budgetary standpoint. This change would be great for our business. This is what my leadership would like to see in a lot of things that they purchase now. I would like to see that architecture continue to evolve in that clustered environment."

"I would like to see a little more flexibility in customizing some of the SnapMirror stuff. We have been having a little trouble and, in the first round with tech support, they say, "Well, this is how we do it." It's not exactly throttled but it's limited in the number of connections it makes. We would like to be able to tweak that, to increase it a little bit, because we don't have half a dozen large areas that we are protecting, we have more like 40 or 50 areas. They run into each other a little bit and I don't want to spend time on them."

More NetApp AFF cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive."

"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."

"The tool is an investment that we've budgeted for. While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits. We don't regret purchasing it."

"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."

"They can tout the functionality and cutting edge technology that they have, but that's where the price tag comes in. The cost is high, but I think as they grow their business and get more customers that it will probably go down a little bit."

"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."

"The tool's pricing is cheap; I rate it a six to seven out of ten. Most of our sales are not subscription-based. We sell the hardware, and customers keep using it. They only renew the service part annually. The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"Compared to its competitors, IBM's offering is the most cost-effective."

"The solution is priced well."

"Compared to other solutions, the cost of IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is reasonable, with a one-time payment of around $70,000. However, additional support is available for $25,000 for three years. The overall maintenance cost is steep."

"The price of IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is less than Dell. For upgrades, the Dell solutions are more expensive."

"It's a lot less costly than cloud storage. People get surprised by the cost of cloud storage, which is extremely expensive and four or five times the cost of storage on-premises. People don't realize what they're spending on storage until they start getting bills from Amazon, Microsoft, and others. This is a good way to reduce your cloud storage expenses."

"The tool's pricing is competitive."

"The price of IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMele can be considered affordable when taking into account the operating system that is required for it to function properly. This operating system, which is licensed by IBM, may carry a higher cost, but it is worth the investment for larger corporate entities, such as insurance companies, Fortune Five companies, and banks, who make up a significant portion of their target market. The FlashSystems are designed for larger corporations and multinational enterprises, and may not be the most cost-effective solution for smaller businesses."

"The price of the FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is reasonable."

More IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe pricing and cost advice

"All features are included in the license, whereas with an EMC solution, you have to pay separately for extra terabytes."

"I would like it to be a lot less expensive, but it's been a very good solution for us."

"I am able to store two times more data than what I'm purchasing, which affects the way funds are being utilized."

"Obviously depending on the price point, NetApp is obviously a little more expensive than your generic Dell SAN solution or whatever."

"NetApp AFF is an expensive product, although not compared to other vendors."

"I find the pricing to be reasonable, particularly with the recent inclusion of features like snap locking and ransomware protection within the ONTAP license instead of having them as separate licenses."

"Our TCO decreased significantly because we were paying maintenance on nine different arrays throughout the country. We've condensed those down to three arrays, and our maintenance fees from the IBM product dropped by over a half million dollars a year, saving us $500,000 USD."

"From an application standpoint, we have seen a lot of return investment on the speeds and responsiveness of the actual storage."

More NetApp AFF pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user186357

Solutions Architect with 51-200 employees

Jan 28, 2015

NetApp vs. XtremIO

Is there another storage platform as feature rich as NetApp FAS? I think it is fair to say that NetApp FAS running Clustered Data ONTAP is a very feature rich platform – the move to the clustered version of ONTAP has brought many next-generation features including Scale-out and Non-disruptive…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Manufacturing Company

12%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Recreational Facilities/Services Company

Manufacturing Company

16%

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

The price of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is very expensive, though I do not know the actual price because I am using the E...

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What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

I have no specific improvements to suggest for Pure FlashArray X NVMe at this time. The performance statistics could ...

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What do you like most about IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe?

The storage serves the virtual environment. Most of our applications run in the virtual environment, and it serves ne...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe?

The tool is expensive, though I do not know the specific licensing costs.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe?

The solution's compression needs to be improved, as it's not the best. Furthermore, support from the partner could al...

See all answers

What is the Biggest Difference Between Dell EMC Unity and NetApp AFF?

Well, Is one thing NetApp Storage has vs other brand is the mix of protocol CIFS with NFS booth working together in t...

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What is the Biggest Difference Between Dell EMC Unity and NetApp AFF?

This question is very dependent on your requirements. Both are among the best in the field. Of course, the intended c...

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What is the Biggest Difference Between Dell EMC Unity and NetApp AFF?

The answer depends on your needs and budget. If you want high performance (who doesn't) or let's say the latency matt...

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Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 27% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 18% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 15% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 10% of the time

Dell PowerMax vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 9% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform vs IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe

Compared 28% of the time

Dell PowerStore vs IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe

Compared 22% of the time

Dell PowerMax vs IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe

Compared 21% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe

Compared 15% of the time

Hitachi VSP E Series vs IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe

Compared 13% of the time

More IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs NetApp AFF

Compared 16% of the time

NetApp ASA vs NetApp AFF

Compared 9% of the time

Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series vs NetApp AFF

Compared 8% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs NetApp AFF

Compared 8% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs NetApp AFF

Compared 7% of the time

More NetApp AFF Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

July 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe

July 2025

Download IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp AFF

July 2025

Download NetApp AFF product report

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X

IBM FlashSystem 9100, FlashSystem 9100

NetApp All Flash FAS, NetApp AFF, NetApp Flash FAS

Overview

Pure Storage FlashArray//X is the world’s first enterprise-class, all-NVMe flash storage array. It represents a new class of storage – shared accelerated storage, which is a term coined by Gartner – that delivers major breakthroughs in performance, simplicity, and consolidation.

Pure Storage

IBM FlashSystem 9100 combines the performance of flash and Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) end-to-end with the reliability and innovation of IBM FlashCore technology and the rich features of IBM Spectrum Virtualize - all in a powerful 2U enterprise-class storage system. Providing intensive data driven multicloud storage capacity, FlashSystem 9100 is deeply integrated with the software defined capabilities of IBM Spectrum Storage allowing you to easily add in the multicloud solutions that best support your business.

IBM

The NetApp A-Series and C-Series are AFF storage arrays that deliver high performance, scalability, and simplified data management for a wide range of workloads. They are designed for organizations that need to improve the performance and agility of their applications, while also reducing costs and complexity.

NetApp A-Series and C-Series feature a scale-out architecture that can be scaled to meet the needs of your growing business. They also support a wide range of built-in data protection and data security features, including snapshots, replication, disaster recovery, and autonomous ransomware protection.

AFF A-Series all-flash systems deliver industry-leading performance, density, scalability, security, and network connectivity.

AFF C-Series systems are suited for large-capacity deployment as an affordable way to modernize your data center to all flash and also connect to the cloud.

NetApp AFF Benefits

Speed up your critical applications with lightning-fast end-to-end NVMe enterprise all-flash arrays.
Increase Performance: AFF A-Series systems deliver industry-leading performance proven by SPC-1 and SPEC SFS industry benchmarks, making them ideal for demanding, highly transactional applications such as Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, MongoDB databases, VDI, and server virtualization.
Save up to 95% of rack space and up to 85% of power and cooling cost over hybrid flash storage.
Reduce cost with guaranteed storage efficiency.
Realize even greater savings by tiering cold data to the cloud easily.
Simplify Operations on premises or in the cloud: Eliminate fragmented and redundant toolsets and combine visibility and manageability of storage instances with data services in a unified control plane across the hybrid cloud.

NetApp AFF Features

Expand capacity with nondisruptive scaling in a cluster without silos or data migration.
Manage data with the ultimate flexibility of unified support across different storage media and protocols, on premises or in the cloud.
Scale performance with technology innovations of NVMe/FC and NVMe/TCP connectivity.
Safeguard your data with best-in-class data security, ransomware protection, multifactor admin access, secure multitenant shared storage, and in-flight and at-rest encryption.
Simplify backup and recovery with built-in application-consistent data protection.
Achieve business continuity and fast disaster recovery with zero data loss and zero downtime.
Scale out to 24 nodes, 367PB of effective capacity, and 4 million IOPS non-disruptively.

Reviews from Real Users

NetApp AFF stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its high performance and simplicity. PeerSpot users take note of the advantages of these features in their reviews:

PeerSpot user and Storage Administrator, Daniel Rúnar Friðþjófsson, comments “AFF has helped to simplify our infrastructure, while still getting very high performance for our business-critical applications. Having all these things working well on one solution is really good. We run this as the backbone for both Hyper-V and VMware as well as an archive location for Rubrik. So, it is great having one solution that can do it all.

Because of the ease of it all, you have a highly tunable, high-performance storage system that alleviates a lot of problems. With its ease of management, you can quickly get your work done and go onto the next thing on your list.”

Additionally, Mohan Reddy, Sr. Technology Architect at a Pharma/Biotech company comments on how “NetApp's ONTAP data management software has also made tasks simpler for us. There's no question about that. It has helped us run operations very quickly, saving us a lot of time. Before ONTAP, we used to spend a long time doing regular operations, but with the latest version of the tool, our day-to-day operations are much quicker and easier.”

NetApp

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Information Not Available

DreamWorks Animation, FICO, Yahoo! Japan

Buyer's Guide

IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe vs. NetApp AFF

July 2025

Free Report: IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe vs. NetApp AFF

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe vs. NetApp AFF and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

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